Land of Talk share the gorgeous third single off the long-awaited new album Life After Youth (out May 19 via Create/Control), ‘Loving.’ The song was co-written with and featuring the heavenly harmonies of Sharon Van Etten. The album is a collection of songs that sees Powell in the finest voice of her career, and reuniting with original Land of Talk drummer Bucky Wheaton.

Life After Youth is a set of songs that got Powell through tough times. And now, they can do the same for you. Since forming Land of Talk in 2006, the one certainty in Powell’s life has been uncertainty, as her band has gone from being one of Montreal’s most brash, buzzy indie rock acts to one of its most elusive and enigmatic. After recording Land of Talk’s debut EP, Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, she lost her drummer (the first in what would become a semi-regular pattern of lineup changes). After releasing Land of Talk’s first full-length record produced by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Some Are Lakes (2008), she lost her voice. And after the release of the “breakthrough” (SPIN) Cloak and Cipher LP (2010), Powell lost her will.

If Life After Youth recreates the same conditions and recruits much of the same personnel that produced Land of Talk’s scrappy debut EP, the end result is dramatically different than anything the band has attempted before. While caring for her father, Powell fell under the spell of classical, ambient, and Japanese tonkori music, whose meditative quality aided his recovery. Immersing herself in those sounds would change her entire approach to music making; she started writing songs without her trusty guitar, instead building tracks up from synth beds and programmed loops (“Inner Lover” presents the most radical results of those experiments).